The present invention relates to semiconductor manufacturing, and, more particularly, to a tape out template system and method.
According to a conventional tape out method, an integrated circuit (IC) designer provides device design data to a design service provider. The design service provider generates mask tooling information according to the device design data. The mask tooling information is then transmitted to a mask house to fabricate masks accordingly.
Data used in a conventional tape out method are typically transmitted and exchanged through verbal information, paper data, fax data, and/or e-mail attachments. Data used for mask tooling are keyed in multiple times, and there is no safety mechanism to protect data integrity during the process.
Additionally, preparation and finalization of mask tooling for fabricating an IC device involves both the customer order of the IC and operators from the manufacturing facility. The customer may provide tape out information to a manufacturing facility using different formats. This introduces additional complexity into the tape out process, as operators from the manufacturing facility may need to manually check the data provided and communicate with the customer addressing aspects of the tape out information that are unclear or incorrect.
Typically, in order to submit a proper tape out request, IC designers need to understand semiconductor manufacturer's specific design rule manual (DRM), masking layer & bias manual (MB), and GDS (Graphic Distribution Stream) layer usage description provided by a semiconductor manufacturer to learn how to best engage their design to a semiconductor manufacturer process. Additionally, the IC designer also needs to learn a tape out form instruction for preparation of a proper tape out request.
Hence, there is a need for a tape out template system that addresses problems arising from the existing technology.